Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson denounced the decision of her colleagues who voted that race can no longer be considered a factor in college admissions.
In a note she wrote to the Supreme Court, she criticized the majority for “turning back the clock” on affirmative action.
“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” Jackson wrote in a dissent to the court ruling Thursday.
“But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” she added. “History speaks. In some form, it can be heard forever. The race-based gaps that first developed centuries ago are echoes from the past that still exist today. By all accounts, they are still stark.”
Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the bench and the high court’s newest justice, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, accused the six-member conservative majority of disregarding the country’s flawed history of racial discrimination while also restricting progress academic institutions are trying to make to tackle those social tribulations.
“No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better,” Jackson wrote.
“The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain,” she continued. “If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris said at the Global Black Economic Forum in New Orleans Thursday that it would behoove everyone to read Brown’s dissent.
“I encourage you to read it because she is a beautiful writer who is compelled by logic and a knowledge of history and a clarity of thinking about where we have been as a country and where we have the potential to go,” said the first Black woman in the U.S. to serve as VP. “It is a complete misnomer to suggest this is about [being] colorblind when in fact, it is about being blind to history.”
